Jean-Luc Godard: a beginner's guide

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It is fitting that Le Mépris, or Contempt, is one of Jean-Luc Godard’s most talked-about movies. My (minority) view is that the 1963 film, now on rerelease, has dated and curdled in a way that his other pictures from the 60s haven’t. But Godard is a prose-poet of contempt. He has contempt for postwar imperialism, for the hypocrisy of sexual relations, and even for the commerce underlying modern cinema. He is, at all times, fiercely sceptical of power relations, especially those implicit in movie-making.

The movie is adapted from Alberto Moravia’s 1954 novel of the same name. Jack Palance plays Prokosch, an American producer who hires Paul (Michel Piccoli) to write a screen adaptation of The Odyssey. Paul is pressured to commercialise the project, taking away from the purely artistic values envisioned by the director (Fritz Lang, playing himself). This sours his relationship with his wife, Camille (Brigitte Bardot).

It’s a self-referential movie, a film whose deconstructive gaze is turned on itself, especially on the mechanics of sexual allure – as in Bardot’s famous speech, enumerating the charms of her naked body. Uncompromising, uningratiating film-making.